Sunday, August 31, 2003
Kibo and Usenet
While thinking about the incestous nature of blog to blog references and trackbacks, I rememebered the Kibo cult from Usenet. This started around 1987 when getting onto the 'Net (Usenet) was a matter of begging someone for a feed. Except for email, Usenet was all about newsgroups. Newsgroup content flowed between systems using a simple replication model. A news article flowed from its source site to all other sites via UUCP, usually over slow dialup lines.
The Kibo cult was simple: if you used the word "Kibo" in a newsgroup posting, a reply from "Kibo" would appear. Despite the fact that "under the covers" Kibo was simply James "Kibo" Parry running grep over the content of all of the newsgroups and posting a response, it seemed like an amazing trick at the time. Now we have Technorati and Daypop to do the same thing for bloggers.
The Kibo cult was simple: if you used the word "Kibo" in a newsgroup posting, a reply from "Kibo" would appear. Despite the fact that "under the covers" Kibo was simply James "Kibo" Parry running grep over the content of all of the newsgroups and posting a response, it seemed like an amazing trick at the time. Now we have Technorati and Daypop to do the same thing for bloggers.
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